For this new millenium, I wish for the world to keep being as colourful and varied as it has been. I don't think much will change in my lifetime though. A thousand years is a long time!
I would like to see my children not have to move around the world for universities, national service, work...
I would like us to be able to choose where we want to be, and how we want to live.
I would like a society that pushes culture, intelligence, fun, to develop and mingle.
I would like to continue to be amazed by technology, and to grow with it, putting it to the best use possible.
And I would like to wish you all to have great dreams, and work hard to carry them out. Especially this open source thing. It's more powerful than has been concieved so far, and it's not just a passing fad, but it's up to what we make of it.
I think there will be a way to notarize this somehow: that is no reason to say that e paper will be useless!! There will always be forgers and criminals, whatever technology you make, but that should never be a reason to do away with new technologies.
What e-paper *can* do on the other hand, is stop us from producing so many great amounts of newspapers every day, that are going to be obsolete that same afternoon. And magazines that aren't completely biodegradable because of their plastic content will also stop having to be made from our already poor resources. Maybe this new e-paper thing can make the whole world a little greener.
I don't thing the cost should be such an issue. Paper is cheap because you can only use it once, but with epaper you can probably go on for months!
One thing I'd like to know: is e-paper made from biodegradable components? What effect will it's mass introduction have on the ecology? Can it be recycled? I hope the people who are creating it are asking themselves those questions.
I realise this is all wildly off topic to start with, but it explains how I see all this linux/left wing - microsoft/right wing stuff.
Being an ex refugee of the military coup of 73 in chile, I have lived with and been brought up by a lot of left wing people. A while ago I read a little about what happened back then, and it seems to have been a beautiful ideology, which worked in theory, and would have worked in practice had it not been for the opposition of a lot of powerful countries and companies.
I believe that the chilean people who organised, participated in, and backed the left wing government from before the coup were really trying to do a great thing for chile, in the way that seemed best at the time.
What I see as a mistake then, and what can be put right now (Being a buddhist I believe that the Government of Allende was a wonderful cause that I can choose to pick up on, or it can also be a terrible reminder of a failure..), is that those people were following an ideology, and not their own hearts.
Communism, capitalism, and any inbetweens should be taken with a pinch of salt to really work. We aren't fighting to prove theory, but to make our lives better. And it's very similar with O/S's: a pile of features, or the way a product is marketed or written might make it more established, but without common sense, true enthusiasm, and a love for humanity and technology together, it will be a dead end. I might not have had this proved other than with IBM's fall from grace with the advent of newer technologies, but it just makes sense.
Operating systems should never be a religeon or a political side. They are just things that are meant to do what they do best: interpret the computer's mad language, and make it into something more pleasurable and workable for the user.
If linux should really kill off windows, it will just be a repetition of what has already happened, a new dictator with wonderful promises but the same old repression...unless people try to dig deeper, and try to understand why they really deserve a better operating system. And if so, you should nevert lose sight of this understanding.
I agree with you in that many times initiatives are taken to "preserve" what has already become a boring husk of what it once was. If it is static then it is already dead.
If I were to "preserve" my culture in that sense(as an ex-chilean refugee) it would probably be all about learning outdated languages or about the lives of kings and generals in whatever old wars. And I have absolutely no interest in doing that!
What I mean by the need to watch out for the influence of the internet's "memetic spread" is more on the side of knowing my past, knowing the history about my culture that is still valuable and that can help me, see for example the fact that my father always thought of europeans as "superior" when we first arrived here, as really educated and rich people. It was hard to un-learn, but easy to understand that british people are actually the same as us chileans in those ways and many others!
This might also apply in the case of slaves, or peasants in similar cases, when for some reason they forget their past, their culture, and therefore what keeps them together as a group and gives them an identity.
I'm not sure what actually happened, but it makes sense to remove that past if you wanted to control your slaves/labourers. Better to tell people that they were animals and had no history, and that you are actually doing them a favour by letting them live and work for you.
So in reality, knowing what it's like to be chilean for me means seeing what happened, in the most open way I can, so I can forgive and understand why I'm here now. Also, chilean cooking rocks!
I wouldn't like to inflict any preservation on anyone, in the way you speak of it, but I hope you can understand from these mixed up ramblings the importance that I see it can have many times. And it isn't just something you can inflict, but also something that can be protected, so IMO free speech or freedom of information needs to take into account the information it's rubbing out beneath it if it is really free.
1) the book by dawkins was "The Selfish Gene". not meme. But it was about memes. Hmmm, also, propagation is spelt wrong. HOw easy is it to put in a wee spellchecker? Ispell might be an easy way. It's just a sign of being professional, but it doesn't bother me personally.
2) I also started to think that maybe maybe the websites we're making here are at my work are weblogs too, after reading the article but it's in the eye of the beholder really. Maybe it's just the words, not the ideas that spread..
3) If it is the idea that spreads infectiously through the net, then shouldn't we be looking at a way to preserve our existing cultures? The web can be a way to distribute, as well as influence information. So to put two & two together,
4) In economics(imho of it anyway), you need a state to regulate the market for those aspects of it that are against human nature (eg: putting one cable down for each competing cable company, chlildren working in dangerous areas, whatever) but in the interests of the market. Whatever the opinion of the individual we should be aware that if all this memetic babble is true and not just pub talk, something must be done to sort out in which cases the net (and indeed anything else we create ) is actually in our best interests as individuals.
On one hand, this shows me yet another branch of the well known tree (here in the UK) of make some free-but-sort-of-complicated service on the net && charge users for support. Perhaps at some point we'll all be coding for free but explaining for a lot more!
But on the other hand it drives to the forground of my mind the idea I had the other day:
For me linux is a beautiful thing I just switched to from a previous life on an NT box. I love it so far, but I find it stressful. I have no idea how to do things and even the simplest take me hours. I'm blinded by the beauty of the ideals and the configurability, but I've already grown to hate some cryptic man files and long paths to files I use, although as soon as i figure something out, I then can use it five times more than I could use the same thing on NT's point and click point of view.
So I think a lot of people like me, and you may laugh at us, would be really really into seeing a well designed site, or even magazine, that explained things for people who love without understanding all the bits, and of course to show off new software to the masses of new converts.
Anyone got the server, vocation, time, or economic sense to jump into this new gap in the market?
Back at my old university in udine, Italy people are still whispering to each other about this wonderful computer locked away in some top secret research area that actually displays graphics and runs mosaic... The rest of course are surfing in flourescent green with lynx, on dumb terminals connected with sticky tape to some old vax.
What some might not realise is that a lot of old underfunded universities or indeed loads of old fashioned firms in not very IT minded areas of the world have crappy old systems. So I wouldn't be surprised if the winner was some company in the third world somewhere.
Which leads to the question of wether the gigantic amounts of old computer parts we're producing each time we upgrade wouldn't actually be *very* useful to people in other countries...
In any case, I'd rather go for svg, but this is because I'm more of a programming type than a point-and-click oriented designer. If flash were opensourced, of course it would be better for developers, but isn't it important to make things compatible? By this I mean compatible with CSS, XML, XSL and all that. Also, I'm not sure but there must be benefits to having vectors and animations native rather than in a plug-in...?
A legal quality guarantee document would be so so important imo: Engineers and architects may build the solid structures that a lot of our lives are based on, but programmers, and everybody else involved in the life cycle of some IT related system should be able to give guarantees, or at least be held responsible if they do a bad job.
We're building the "virtual" structures of the world, and I know that up to say 10 years ago they weren't really that important, every day their importance grows. And with that our responsibility to make them work well also grows.
Maybe the whole Y2K deal could have been dealt with better had the original programmers been involved legally where possible, or rather, it could have been avoided altogether if there had been already a legal framework to go by to do with making calls direct to the bios (surely the job of the OS).
So I'm quite happy that slowly the world of IT is getting some regulations and things in. But it's up to everybody to make sure the regulations are put together well and justly.
Slashdot Mirror
For this new millenium, I wish for the world to keep being as colourful and varied as it has been. I don't think much will change in my lifetime though. A thousand years is a long time!
I would like to see my children not have to move around the world for universities, national service, work...
I would like us to be able to choose where we want to be, and how we want to live.
I would like a society that pushes culture, intelligence, fun, to develop and mingle.
I would like to continue to be amazed by technology, and to grow with it, putting it to the best use possible.
And I would like to wish you all to have great dreams, and work hard to carry them out. Especially this open source thing. It's more powerful than has been concieved so far, and it's not just a passing fad, but it's up to what we make of it.
Ale
I think there will be a way to notarize this somehow: that is no reason to say that e paper will be useless!! There will always be forgers and criminals, whatever technology you make, but that should never be a reason to do away with new technologies.
What e-paper *can* do on the other hand, is stop us from producing so many great amounts of newspapers every day, that are going to be obsolete that same afternoon. And magazines that aren't completely biodegradable because of their plastic content will also stop having to be made from our already poor resources. Maybe this new e-paper thing can make the whole world a little greener.
I don't thing the cost should be such an issue. Paper is cheap because you can only use it once, but with epaper you can probably go on for months!
One thing I'd like to know: is e-paper made from biodegradable components? What effect will it's mass introduction have on the ecology? Can it be recycled? I hope the people who are creating it are asking themselves those questions.
Ale
I realise this is all wildly off topic to start with, but it explains how I see all this linux/left wing - microsoft/right wing stuff.
Being an ex refugee of the military coup of 73 in chile, I have lived with and been brought up by a lot of left wing people. A while ago I read a little about what happened back then, and it seems to have been a beautiful ideology, which worked in theory, and would have worked in practice had it not been for the opposition of a lot of powerful countries and companies.
I believe that the chilean people who organised, participated in, and backed the left wing government from before the coup were really trying to do a great thing for chile, in the way that seemed best at the time.
What I see as a mistake then, and what can be put right now (Being a buddhist I believe that the Government of Allende was a wonderful cause that I can choose to pick up on, or it can also be a terrible reminder of a failure..), is that those people were following an ideology, and not their own hearts.
Communism, capitalism, and any inbetweens should be taken with a pinch of salt to really work. We aren't fighting to prove theory, but to make our lives better. And it's very similar with O/S's: a pile of features, or the way a product is marketed or written might make it more established, but without common sense, true enthusiasm, and a love for humanity and technology together, it will be a dead end. I might not have had this proved other than with IBM's fall from grace with the advent of newer technologies, but it just makes sense.
Operating systems should never be a religeon or a political side. They are just things that are meant to do what they do best: interpret the computer's mad language, and make it into something more pleasurable and workable for the user.
If linux should really kill off windows, it will just be a repetition of what has already happened, a new dictator with wonderful promises but the same old repression...unless people try to dig deeper, and try to understand why they really deserve a better operating system. And if so, you should nevert lose sight of this understanding.
I agree with you in that many times initiatives are taken to "preserve" what has already become a boring husk of what it once was. If it is static then it is already dead.
If I were to "preserve" my culture in that sense(as an ex-chilean refugee) it would probably be all about learning outdated languages or about the lives of kings and generals in whatever old wars. And I have absolutely no interest in doing that!
What I mean by the need to watch out for the influence of the internet's "memetic spread" is more on the side of knowing my past, knowing the history about my culture that is still valuable and that can help me, see for example the fact that my father always thought of europeans as "superior" when we first arrived here, as really educated and rich people. It was hard to un-learn, but easy to understand that british people are actually the same as us chileans in those ways and many others!
This might also apply in the case of slaves, or peasants in similar cases, when for some reason they forget their past, their culture, and therefore what keeps them together as a group and gives them an identity.
I'm not sure what actually happened, but it makes sense to remove that past if you wanted to control your slaves/labourers. Better to tell people that they were animals and had no history, and that you are actually doing them a favour by letting them live and work for you.
So in reality, knowing what it's like to be chilean for me means seeing what happened, in the most open way I can, so I can forgive and understand why I'm here now. Also, chilean cooking rocks!
I wouldn't like to inflict any preservation on anyone, in the way you speak of it, but I hope you can understand from these mixed up ramblings the importance that I see it can have many times. And it isn't just something you can inflict, but also something that can be protected, so IMO free speech or freedom of information needs to take into account the information it's rubbing out beneath it if it is really free.
Ale
1) the book by dawkins was "The Selfish Gene". not meme. But it was about memes. Hmmm, also, propagation is spelt wrong. HOw easy is it to put in a wee spellchecker? Ispell might be an easy way. It's just a sign of being professional, but it doesn't bother me personally.
2) I also started to think that maybe maybe the websites we're making here are at my work are weblogs too, after reading the article but it's in the eye of the beholder really. Maybe it's just the words, not the ideas that spread..
3) If it is the idea that spreads infectiously through the net, then shouldn't we be looking at a way to preserve our existing cultures? The web can be a way to distribute, as well as influence information. So to put two & two together,
4) In economics(imho of it anyway), you need a state to regulate the market for those aspects of it that are against human nature (eg: putting one cable down for each competing cable company, chlildren working in dangerous areas, whatever) but in the interests of the market. Whatever the opinion of the individual we should be aware that if all this memetic babble is true and not just pub talk, something must be done to sort out in which cases the net (and indeed anything else we create ) is actually in our best interests as individuals.
Ale
On one hand, this shows me yet another branch of the well known tree (here in the UK) of make some free-but-sort-of-complicated service on the net && charge users for support. Perhaps at some point we'll all be coding for free but explaining for a lot more!
But on the other hand it drives to the forground of my mind the idea I had the other day:
For me linux is a beautiful thing I just switched to from a previous life on an NT box. I love it so far, but I find it stressful. I have no idea how to do things and even the simplest take me hours. I'm blinded by the beauty of the ideals and the configurability, but I've already grown to hate some cryptic man files and long paths to files I use, although as soon as i figure something out, I then can use it five times more than I could use the same thing on NT's point and click point of view.
So I think a lot of people like me, and you may laugh at us, would be really really into seeing a well designed site, or even magazine, that explained things for people who love without understanding all the bits, and of course to show off new software to the masses of new converts.
Anyone got the server, vocation, time, or economic sense to jump into this new gap in the market?
Or is it already here?
Ale
Back at my old university in udine, Italy people are still whispering to each other about this wonderful computer locked away in some top secret research area that actually displays graphics and runs mosaic... The rest of course are surfing in flourescent green with lynx, on dumb terminals connected with sticky tape to some old vax.
What some might not realise is that a lot of old underfunded universities or indeed loads of old fashioned firms in not very IT minded areas of the world have crappy old systems. So I wouldn't be surprised if the winner was some company in the third world somewhere.
Which leads to the question of wether the gigantic amounts of old computer parts we're producing each time we upgrade wouldn't actually be *very* useful to people in other countries...
In any case, I'd rather go for svg, but this is because I'm more of a programming type than a point-and-click oriented designer. If flash were opensourced, of course it would be better for developers, but isn't it important to make things compatible? By this I mean compatible with CSS, XML, XSL and all that. Also, I'm not sure but there must be benefits to having vectors and animations native rather than in a plug-in...?
A legal quality guarantee document would be so so important imo: Engineers and architects may build the solid structures that a lot of our lives are based on, but programmers, and everybody else involved in the life cycle of some IT related system should be able to give guarantees, or at least be held responsible if they do a bad job.
We're building the "virtual" structures of the world, and I know that up to say 10 years ago they weren't really that important, every day their importance grows. And with that our responsibility to make them work well also grows.
Maybe the whole Y2K deal could have been dealt with better had the original programmers been involved legally where possible, or rather, it could have been avoided altogether if there had been already a legal framework to go by to do with making calls direct to the bios (surely the job of the OS).
So I'm quite happy that slowly the world of IT is getting some regulations and things in. But it's up to everybody to make sure the regulations are put together well and justly.
Alejandro